Volk

by David Nickle

  “From where did you move it?”

  “Oh, Eliada. That is the only place where one could find a Juke. Where God watches over. That is the only place. Ever, anywhere . . .”

  “Eliada is gone. Jukes are big. From where did you move it?”

  “From Eliada.”

  Annie leaned forward and gave Aguillard two light slaps on his cheeks.

  “Did you collect it at Eliada yourself?” she asked, switching to English. Aguillard was too comfortable speaking his native tongue.

  “Not me,” he said in English. “But men from the office did. And it was not terribly large. It was tiny in fact. And very well-protected for the journey.” Aguillard smiled lopsidedly. “Au sein de la mère.”

  “Its mother,” said Annie. “Inside a woman?”

  “There were three women, carrying Jukes. The only survivors of the contagion. Aside from yourself, Doctor Waggoner, Miss Harper, and Mister Thistledown.” He frowned. “Tell me, what have you given me?”

  Annie told him, and he nodded. “It feels as though you gave me quite a large dose.”

  “Large enough to keep you out of trouble.”

  He laughed at that, and nodded again.

  “You are, if I may say, a less-than-gracious hostess.” He pronounced it hos’ess.

  “You’re one to talk.” Annie stood. “Those women were at Eliada twenty years ago.”

  “And they are all long dead, nearly as long as that.” He shrugged. “Fragile things. Their children . . . are hardier.”

  Annie fought back curiosity. She could dig into Aguillard’s memories for hours, days, and that curiosity wouldn’t be sated. What did they do to the women? How did the “children” survive, and how did Aguillard’s people manage to control those children . . . keep them from turning the tables?

  But she didn’t have hours . . . not by the look of Aguillard, whose forehead was now slick with sweat . . . whose hands fell loosely in his lap. She had a few minutes.

  “Why did you come from Wallgau to talk with Doctor Waggoner?”

  “To enlist his help.”

  “Help with the dead Juke?”

  “No. With the one that killed it.”

  “What killed the Juke?”

  “Who, you mean?”

  “Orlok,” said Annie—and at that, Aguillard’s hands made fists, and he lifted his head, and Annie’s heart sank. She’d tipped her hand. Aguillard—no fool—had seen it. He knew, now, that she knew more about Wallgau than how to find it on a map.

  “Orlok,” said Aguillard. “Yes. You and your husband . . . are better informed than I thought. And that is why . . . you poison me. Has Jason . . . Thistledown contacted you?”

  Annie kept her voice level. “Who is Orlok?”

  “You are asking the questions.”

  “I am asking the questions.”

  “Who knows who he is? He is someone that our . . . hosts . . . our hosts had been looking for . . . for many, many years. You know our hosts?”

  Annie didn’t answer, so Aguillard went on.

  “Well they are Nazi Party. Idiots. Plaut, the fat fool. And oh . . .” He looked to one side, as though he’d seen something there, and blinked. “. . . someone you might know! Bergstrom! Johannes Bergstrom! You worked for his brother, in Eliada!”

  Annie didn’t bother to feign surprise. She just nodded. He laughed.

  “Nils Bergstrom was a surgeon. Johannes . . . an alienist. But a eugenicist. Still. Like his elder brother in America.”

  “Like you.”

  “Like me, yes.”

  “All working from the Eugenics Records Office?”

  Aguillard nodded, a lolling head-bob, and laughed. “Cold Creek Harbour. That’s part. Twenty years ago, when all that occurred . . . we were mostly working for . . . them. For Cold Creek Harbour.”

  “Tell me about Orlok,” said Annie.

  “Oh yes! Orlok! Well Bergstrom’d been looking for him, for years.”

  “So you said.”

  “So I said. Orlok . . . he is the vampire, yes? From the old moving picture. But obviously not a vampire. No such thing! Still. That’s what he calls himself.”

  “Did you meet him?”

  Aguillard nodded once more.

  “Tell me about him.”

  “Big. Very big. Not handsome. But beautiful. Like a mountainside beautiful. Just as they suspected . . . A superman. They could not find him for years of looking. And then . . . when they had ceased to look . . . when they brought the Juke, I think . . . then, he arrived!”

  “How.”

  “Like Christ to Jerusalem,” said Aguillard. “How else?”

  Annie leaned back on the couch and regarded Aguillard. His mouth was turned up in a grotesque smirk, even as his eyelids fluttered and his breathing grew shallow. Time was growing short.

  “Did you tell anyone you came here?” she asked, and he said no, he hadn’t. “Not your masters with the Eugenics Records Office?”

  “No,” he said. “Came here firs’. You . . . your husband . . . I’d wanted to bring him there all along. Before Jason. But idiot Nazis . . . wanted a white.”

  “Did you contact your Eugenics Records Office?” she asked again, and again.

  “No.”

  “What is it you wanted to ask my husband?” she asked.

  “Well. I wanted to confer. Just as I told you. We know that he had maintained . . . an independent inquiry . . . into biologie . . . transcendantale . . . And I wanted to see . . . if he had ever encountered . . . a hybrid.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I wanted to know . . . if he could explain a mechanism in which a Juke . . . could, in its pupal state . . . mingling with a living foetus within a uterus . . . also become a man.”

  As the drug completed its effect, English became too much for poor old Hector Aguillard, and even French was a morass. But Annie satisfied herself on several important points. First: she satisfied herself that Aguillard was here alone. He had not, for a reason that he couldn’t make clear, contacted any associates in the Eugenics Records Office since departing Wallgau . . . since fleeing Wallgau. On that last point he was very clear. Wallgau and its environs had become a hazard to him and his person. Which made sense, given Zimmermann’s account of his own departure. He had also not contacted Emile Desrosiers, which was more of a relief; it had only occurred to Annie after the drug took effect that she might have to deal with the local businessman—possibly gangster—once the interrogation was done.

  The interrogation was interrupted by an aspirating event—some of the coffee and a foaming dose of bile found its way to Aguillard’s windpipe—and if Annie hadn’t been there, that might have ended matters right there for the poor doctor. But she managed to clear his airway and lean Doctor Aguillard forward so that he could cough and vomit into a bucket that she hastily fetched from the kitchen.

  She was able to nurse him back to a state where he could, briefly, answer the last set of questions that she had—and also to confirm that he had, in fact, abducted her friend Jason Thistledown and placed him in such a dangerous situation. To that, he offered his last coherent words in answer. And after Annie allowed those words to sink in, she moved Aguillard to the sofa, and let him lay down.

  She arranged her skirt then and kneeled beside him, watching as his eyes fluttered half-shut, and listening as his breathing slowed . . . as he slipped into unconsciousness . . . coma . . .

  Setting her mouth, Annie touched his cheek with her fingertips, and then brought thumb and forefinger to his nostrils and pinched tight as she placed her hand over his mouth.

  Forty-two years, Annie thought as she sat there next to Aguillard’s still form, and now I’m a murderer.

  A murderess.

  Murder was something that she had thought about, every now and then over the years since she and Andrew had escaped Eliada, fled North America, and finally taken up hiding in plain sight in France. Fleeing was the intelligent thing to do, she knew that . . . Andrew wasn’t safe
in America—not as a Negro practising medicine, or trying to . . . but also not after having escaped the horror at Eliada, knowing that the people who’d wrought it . . . Germaine Frost’s, Garrison Harper’s masters . . . knowing they existed as a specific and ever-present menace.

  It was sensible to leave, but it was not a thing that always sat easy with Annie. She felt as though she were running from a fight, letting a war go, and that allowing those men to persist . . . that was a kind of abrogation too. She had wondered how it would have been, to open up one of the jars of contagion that Germaine Frost had brought, in the panelled rooms where the eugenicists at Cold Creek Harbour met to discuss their idiot notions . . . to watch them all choke on the fluids bubbling up in their lungs. . . .

  To cull them.

  Annie checked the clock that hung over the mantel. It was still early—just half-past nine. There would have been plenty of time to make her train, had the morning gone differently. But of course she wouldn’t now. She was going to need some help for the next part of this, help from someone she could trust, and she was sure she could trust Bobby Grady.

  But she wouldn’t be able to raise him at this hour . . . they’d have to wait until two in the afternoon to meet with Ozzie and Dominic. He didn’t keep a telephone at home, or at least hadn’t supplied Andrew with an exchange, so she would call him when he arrived at the bar.

  In the meantime, she would have to try and telephone Vire—get a hold of Luc Curzon, see if he might be able to put Ruth on the line, or at least deliver a message to her. And Annie would also need to compose a wire to Andrew. That would have to wait until he arrived in Munich, at Herr Kurtzweiller’s rooms there. Annie hoped it would catch him. He needed to know . . . Ruth needed to know . . . matters had changed, rather dramatically.

  Murder! She shook her head—in disbelief? No, looking down at Aguillard—his face already pale and gray—there was nothing to do but accept what she’d done.

  But there lay the surprise. Maybe that’s what made Annie laugh, as she did.

  Annie had always imagined that her innate goodness, her morality, would draw in on her, prick her conscience, were she ever to commit such a thing. That was what she would tell herself, when she would imagine Charles Davenport, wheezing and coughing and choking on his deathbed, put there by Annie’s own vengeful doing. It stopped her, this . . . this ghost of kindliness that she had always imagined haunted her.

  Perhaps it still did . . . it might yet come for her in the night, and wake her with shrill accusations. Did you not vow to preserve life when you entered the medical profession, Annie? Don’t you know that there is nothing worse—nothing!—than taking a human life? Doesn’t revenge taste so much worse inside you now than maybe it smelled, when you were thinking about it?

  Maybe revenge would taste worse tonight. But now, as Annie held fast on Aguillard’s mouth, his nose . . . it tasted just fine.

  Aguillard was a fiend. He had at the very least participated in a decades-old scheme to murder the tiny town near which Jason Thistledown grew, murdering in the process his mother. He was culpable in the obscenity of Eliada—even if he hadn’t unleashed the contagion there . . . the Cave Germ.

  After he had stolen Jason Thistledown’s family . . . after his organization had driven Jason from his home, to the bosom of the Juke . . . Hector Aguillard had come to personally rob Jason of the rest of himself.

  She might have spared Aguillard, for all that . . . simply let him drift unconscious, ask Mr. Grady to see that he was driven to some location far off and left to come to, forgetful that anything had happened.

  She might have, until she asked him specifically about Jason’s well-being, and heard his answer.

  “Oh Jason, yes. He is very much alive. You must watch that one.”

  “Why is that?”

  “He is monstrous,” Aguillard had said, his words slurring, his breathing slowing. “Utterly monstrous. If you see him . . . do you want my advice?”

  And with just two words, Aguillard convinced her.

  “Tue-le.”

  Kill him.

  I won’t kill Jason, she thought.

  But monstrous things . . . For killing those, there is an argument.

  Annie removed her hand from Aguillard’s mouth, and let go of his nose. The nostrils stuck closed for a moment, and then the elasticity of the cartilage asserted the glue of mucous, and first the left and then the right popped open.

  A murderess, she thought—and A murderess, again, as breath hitched in Aguillard’s chest and he coughed, and as she put her hand back over his mouth and pinched his nostrils once more, she concluded:

  A murderess.

  PART IV

  The Syncopation Gambit

  One

  Andrew Waggoner and the august members of Le Noir Qui Danse had five seats together on a coach just up from the baggage car. The seats were hard, and too small. But the company was good, and leaving Paris, they had some room to stretch their legs. There just weren’t many folk heading to Germany in the night, on that night.

  “Why’n’t you take the window, Doc?” Ozzie suggested after they’d stowed their bags and settled in.

  “For the view,” said Andrew, and Ozzie laughed and said, “Some view.” The sun was already below the horizon as they were underway, and mostly what the window did was reflect back the lights in the car, the faces of Andrew’s fellow travellers.

  Bill Colbert, the piano man, was up on his feet and smoking a thin hand-rolled cigarette, toe-tapping, looking guilty as hell, of something-or-other. Pete Norland, who played drums, sidled in beside Andrew, tipped his hat over his eyes and made to pretend to sleep. Ozzie sat down beside Charlie LeFauvre, the saxophone player, who had a cloth-bound book in his lap that he didn’t open. It was Ben Hur. Ozzie had a bag with sandwiches in them, and he pulled one out and dug into it after the conductor had come around to take a look at their tickets.

  Once the train picked up speed, they got to talking. LeFauvre wondered about Munich, and the venue—the Cabaret Imperial—and made it clear just how much he didn’t care for the German cabaret tradition these days, “with the boys dressed up as the girls and the girls not dressed at all . . . and all that political bullshit.”

  Colbert lit up another cigarette and agreed that he didn’t like that business when the Germans did it, but added he didn’t like very much of anything that the Germans did, and Ozzie said he didn’t want to hear any of that once they came to the border and Colbert told him not to worry. “I’m entitled to my opinion,” LeFauvre said, and picked up his book.

  “Hey Doc,” said Pete Norland, to get the topic changed, or at least moved on, “what do you think of the cabaret?”

  “Haven’t ever been to one,” said Andrew.

  “Well you’re gonna be in for a treat, then,” said Norland. “You speak much German?”

  “Enough to get by.”

  “I speak it pretty well,” said Norland. “‘Enough to get by’ will mean a lot of their jokes go right over your head.”

  And then Norland got into a long talk about grammar in German—how simple music hall jokes that might fly in England or France just didn’t work, because the language used so many compound words, and puns didn’t necessarily play the same way . . . but they did play in a different way, and a fellow had to speak and understand German better than Pete obviously thought Andrew did. “And anyhow,” said Pete finally, “they don’t even speak proper German in Munich. It’s all Bavarian there.”

  “Well then looks like I’ll be completely lost,” said Andrew. “You tell me when to laugh.”

  “A rimshot ought to do it,” said Ozzie, and at that they all laughed, even LeFauvre who was supposedly deep in A Tale of the Christ.

  “Doc’s not going to be in the Cabaret for long, if at all,” said Ozzie. “He’s up to his own business, ain’t that right?”

  Andrew nodded, and LeFauvre and Colbert nodded along, because they had an idea.

  The whole band had more of an ide
a as to what business Andrew was up to than he’d have liked—Dominic had given Ozzie an altogether too honest short version of the problem in Wallgau when they first met—and Ozzie’d shared it with his band, so as the train pushed eastward through the dark fields of France, they all had their questions.

  Colbert wanted to know about the Nazis, which Dominic had indicated were going to be a problem for them all, and not just because the colour of Andrew’s skin.

  “You got a friend stuck in there with them stormtroopers,” he asked. “You figure he’s one of them by now?”

  Andrew allowed as he didn’t know exactly what Jason’s predicament was, but from what he knew of Jason and had heard of Nazis, he didn’t think it likely Jason would’ve signed up. He wasn’t even sure that Jason was in the company of the S.A.

  “That’s good,” said Colbert. “Speaks well of him. Speaks well of you too, going in to help him out.”

  Andrew didn’t have a good answer for that, but Ozzie mentioned that it wasn’t only to help out Jason Thistledown that they were bringing in Andrew along with the other two.

  “The march of science,” he said, and winked.

  Dominic had told Ozzie a little bit about the Juke too. LeFauvre put his book face down on his lap and asked about that. He’d been given to understand that they were looking into a bug that made a man pray more, and he didn’t like the sound of it.

  “Like a rash,” said Norland. “Itchin’ for religion.”

  “Man should pray because it’s the right thing to do,” said LeFauvre.

  Andrew said he agreed on that point.

  “Trouble is,” said Norland, “what if scratching an itch is also the right thing to do?”

  Ozzie told Norland he was a thoughtful fellow as well as a smart-mouth, which Andrew hoped would end that line of questions, but it didn’t.

  “You a praying man?” LeFauvre asked Andrew.

  “Sure.”

  “Sure,” said LeFauvre, and at the look he gave, Andrew smiled a little sheepishly, and shook his head and apologized.

  “I’m not really, no.”

  “All right.”